Ecumenism?

Ecumenism?

Peter Davidson

Whatever happened to the Reformation? It seems that the pursuit
of ecumenism at any cost has resulted in the total suppression in
our "mainstream" (pardon the expression) Catholic media of any
honest discussion about the origins of the divisions among the
Christian churches.

Yet I cannot see how any genuine unity can be achieved by a
denial of the past and the pretence that we all believe, more or
less, in the same things. We must be honest about our
differences.

The post-Reformation churches owe their very existence to the
total repudiation of the "blasphemous fable" of the Mass and the
most fundamental Catholic belief that bread and wine become the
Body and Blood of Christ at the moment of Consecration.

Following the Reformation, former Catholic churches were
stripped of altars, tabernacles, statues and every vestige of
Catholic belief and practice, and the Mass could only be said in
secret under penalty of death. For hundreds of years it remained
so, and Protestantism, as its name implied, defined itself more in
terms of what it did not believe than in any clear doctrine of
faith.

Growing up in England, I often visited these cold, empty shells
of churches where the Mass had once been celebrated. Their
ministers were known as vicars or parsons, never priests, and
nothing resembling a Mass was ever celebrated in those
churches.

While Christian unity is a worthy goal, it is a fanciful notion
that we can have genuine unity among those who disagree on the most
fundamental beliefs. True unity of belief from a Catholic viewpoint
would need to involve an acceptance of the whole Catholic faith by
all concerned, especially its sacramental life and the Mass -
beliefs which set Catholics apart from Protestant Christians.